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With Seattle on the hook, Council evaluates viaduct risk

With the unresolved question as to whether Seattle would pay if the state hit cost overruns with the deep-bore tunnel replacement for the Alaskan Way Viaduct, the city has has hired three consultants to evaluate potential risks in the state’s tunnel plan.

The city will pay about $125,000 for three consultants, including Tim Payne of Nelson/Nygaard, who was hired earlier this year by the council and mayor’s office to help find design alternatives in the state’s plans for the new state Route 520 bridge, City Council staff said Monday during a meeting of the special committee on the Alaskan Way Viaduct and Seawall Replacement project.

The council has contracted Nelson/Nygaard and CDM Engineering. In addition, the City Attorney’s Office has a contract with Lane Powell, a law firm with offices in Seattle, Portland and Olympia, to review legal issues pertaining to the tunnel agreements.

The consultants’ primary focus will be on potential challenges, risks and legal issues with the state ‘s request for proposals from potential contractors. Payne’s work will focus on traffic and transportation, and won’t start until the fall.

In addition, consultants will be working with Seattle Public Utilities to evaluate the risk of utility lines settling during tunnel construction.

The Seattle City Council is poised to vote on a series of agreements that must be signed between the city and state before potential contractors can bid on the project. The state Transportation Department would like to get the agreements finalized in July so it can stick to schedule in which design proposals would be due in October and a contracting team selected in January.

Councilman Tom Rasmussen said last week the consultants would be hired so the council could be confident that the potential for cost overruns had been minimized.

The bored tunnel plan is projected to cost $1.9 billion. Mayor Mike McGinn has threatened not to support the agreements until the issue of who of cost overruns cleared up. The Legislature last year said Seattle must pick up the tab if the project busts its budget. McGinn said last month he’d veto a city-state agreement that would allow the tunnel replacement to proceed, but has indicated if the City Council overrides his rejection he’d follow their direction.

Ron Paananen, WSDOT’s administrator for the tunnel project, explained Monday that since the tunnel contract is a “design-build” contract in which the state does preliminary design work before handing the bulk of the project over to the contractor, the contractor assumes full risks for about 85 percent of the project.

In other tunnel news:

The council was told Monday that work to replace the central waterfront seawall won’t begin until 2013 due to the time to obtain permits, environmental studies and work with the Army Corps of Engineers. Construction won’t finish until 2015. The $290 million project is a large chunk of the city’s responsibilities under the tunnel agreement with the state. The city’s Transportation Department hopes to have a preferred design by 2011 and is considering options that would be better for salmon and the environment.

Timber holding up the wall is deteriorating and there’s a one in 10 chance it could fail during an earthquake during the next 10 years.

Mayor McGinn had proposed earlier this year sending voters a $241 million, 30-year bond measure to accelerate the project and finish it by 2014. The City Council, however, rejected the mayor’s plan and never voted on sending it to the ballot.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.